It takes real bottle to be Sinéad O’Connor. We all know that by now, but tonight on a chilly but bright Dublin evening that bottle is more evident than ever. Sinéad O’Connor clearly, more than ever, could not give a fuck.
The voice is still capable of enchanting you with its fragility and blowing you away with its power, but maybe we all expected that, because at first it’s the bravely mixed set-list that grabs your attention. It’s a little disjointed, but it shows the maturity of an artist who appreciates where she’s been as much as where she’s going. Hence we start with ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, from her breakthrough second album I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got.
From there we hop to ‘I Am Stretched On Your Grave’, and soon Sinéad has launched into a bracing version of ‘You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart’. As the light falls on the beautiful architecture of the castle, there’s a chillingly cinematic feel in the air.
O’Connor is more of a priestess on stage than she ever was on any controversial Late Late Show appearance. For someone who still has so much to say, she offers little in the way of banter, letting the music speak for itself. Tracks from new album Theology are afforded a reverence by the audience not normally given to unfamiliar material, before Sinéad delivers a belting performance of what she calls ‘that song’.
Though it seems a little under-rehearsed, the band not fully attuned to each other yet, ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ is as stunning in this setting as you might imagine. Almost subconsciously, the audience sings along to the song that’s soundtracked a million break-ups but never lost its magic. The festival atmosphere that was evident early in the set returns to spite the cold weather with a version of ‘Mandinka’ that’s a little shaky but still shows why people started to take real notice of Sinéad in 1988. Aside from the bald head that is.
We close with ‘Rivers Of Babylon’ and pile out of Dublin Castle. Having prayed at the altar of Sinéad, now all we can do is pray that Theology, is the return to form we’re all clearly so hungry for.